Seb Bonami clears his throat, looks down at his script. He struggles with the monologue at first. He’s somewhat stiff, somewhat thrown. By the time he’s finished, the asterisk has turned into a question mark. It’s Lucy’s turn to feed the lines, but just as she’s preparing to ask if he’s ready, Clara jumps the gun. She’s mixed up the order, somehow. That laser focus has been knocked askew.
‘How could you?’ Clara says, suddenly, shakily. Her voice isdifferent this time. Her cheeks are still burning. ‘I thought I told you never to step through this door again.’
Nico looks at her. So does Agathe. The Swede raises an eyebrow. Seb’s face seems to say, are we really doing this? But his jaw is set, and it doesn’t take him long to dive in. He’s memorised the lines, and he’s looking straight at Clara.
‘You don’t own me,’ he says. ‘I may be beneath you in station, but I’m not a dog for you to kick.’
‘Should I fetch my husband, then?’
‘Damn your husband,’ Seb says. ‘And damn you.’
‘You should remember who you’re talking to.’
‘And you should remember what we were.’
There’s a pause. Lucy knows that everyone else in the room is feeling what she’s feeling, sensing what she’s sensing. Seb is still staring at Clara, and Clara is now staring back at him, script abandoned. It’s as if there’s only space for Clara and Seb in this room, as if everything else must dissolve simply to allow them to be.
‘I have been in hell, this past year,’ Seb says, his voice cracking. ‘I have thought of nothing but you. I have woken to thoughts of you. I have tossed and turned to thoughts of you. I have toiled in the shadow of your house from dawn till dusk, thinking only of you.’
All embarrassment has left Clara now. She reads not as if she is a reader, but as if this is a role she was born to play. ‘I have felt it,’ she says, breathlessly. ‘I have felt you. I have watched you. I have missed you.’ A pause. ‘We can’t do this. We shouldn’t.’
‘And yet,’ Seb says, his own breath quickening, something lightening in those dark eyes after all. ‘Here we are.’
A stunned silence. Lucy wonders, for a second, if there might be applause. Seb turns his eyes downwards. Clara clears her throat and shuffles the pages in front of her, as if suddenly aware of her superiors. She cares about her job. But Nico seems only to care about Clara’s reaction, and to whom she is reacting.
‘Thank you for your time,’ Nico says seriously. Her voice lifts. She smiles. ‘We’ll be in touch.’
After Seb leaves, Agathe nods at Nico, and Nico nods at Agathe, and a Sharpie circles a name on paper, then underlines it twice. Lucy makes a comment to Clara, but Clara asks if she might be excused to get some water. They decide to break for lunch, and Clara is out of the room before she can hear the Swede speak for the first time that day.
‘I wonder what he drew on,’ he says, tapping one finger against his slab of a chin. ‘For all that hurt.’
a commuter
Heading home early after a half-day, and the 243 bus to Waterloo is almost empty. The April sun shines bright, but fools no one. There’s an unwelcome gust of cold air every time the doors open.
And this, a new thing: they’ve automated the voice over the intercom.
Holborn Station
The bleeps of tickets being bought and Oyster cards being tapped, and a few pairs of feet trudge defeatedly up the stairs. Among them is a tall man wearing a black denim jacket and looking uniquely unhappy. He chews his lip, shakes his head, sits down directly in front of the commuter. He takes out a pair of black wraparound headphones and plugs them into a scuffed first-generation iPod.
Then a woman appears at the stop of the stairs, and the man speaks out loud. ‘You’ve got to be kidding me.’
‘Seb,’ says the young woman with the bleached-white hair, looking like she’s seen a ghost.
She heads down the aisle, steadying herself on the backs of chairs as the bus starts to move. When she reaches this Seb, she slides into the seat next to him. He ignores her, staring out of the window at a man on the pavement in a branded jacket who is trying his hardest to hand out free bottles of vitamin-infused water.
The young woman taps Seb’s shoulder, does a mime. ‘Take off your headphones,’ she says. Then, louder. ‘Please take off your headphones.’
He takes off his headphones. ‘Why are you following me, Clara?’
‘I want to talk.’
Seb doesn’t respond. The commuter thinks that Clara might be about to cry. Before she can, the bus pulls into another stop.
Red Lion Street
On the top deck, there’s a very long silence. Clara speaks first. ‘You’ve grown a beard,’ she says.
